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Phoenix's Hyperspace: Linux-Based Instant-On For Laptops

11-07-2007, 11:14 PM

Not long after I covered Splashtop, the instant-on Linux-based boot environment that runs from flash memory, it looks like other hardware makers are getting into the same game. Meet Phoenix's Linux-based HyperSpace.
HyperSpace is a little like Splashtop ... only, on closer inspection, not. Instead of just being an operating environment that's invoked before a formally-installed OS boots, it can be invoked at any time.

If all this sounds like a hypervisor in hardware, you're right -- the name itself should have been a total giveaway, come to think of it. This was probably the next logical step for the way PCs handle an operating system: instead of just booting directly from BIOS into one of several OSes on a given machine, you make the BIOS into a hypervisor and allow OSes to be loaded side-by-side into partitioned memory segments.

The BIOS will become extinct (though not in the near future because windows still doesn't boot without it),
it will be replaced with EFI (or better yet, LinuxBIOS) and Phoenix' license revenue will dry up.
This announcement is more like a "Look we're still relevant!" cry

Comment

Maybe there is a misunderstanding what BootCamp does. Primary the real working part is the BIOS Emulation that has been added to support legacy OS like Win or Linux (you needed a little patch for Grub, but thats known for quite some time). Then it is a frontend to resize the hd, which could be done via commandline too. The last thing that did the older ones was to create an ISO image with drivers for Win - currently this option was removed as the new 10.5 release has a DVD with differnet content for each OS, that means for Win you see the drivers.